What’s a Trollope?
An article in the Guardian UK laments the sinking intelligence of bookstore employees. While I happen to agree and have my own stories (“No, E. Annie Proulx’s last name is not pronounced “Pro-Locks”), pieces of this sort usually wear their snottiness on their sleeve, as if to say “Look at all these morons who don’t know as much as I do.”
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2 Replies to “What’s a Trollope?”
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Oh, that just ticks me off. I worked in a bookstore for 4 years, I have a BA in both English and Drama, I’ve written 15-page reports on the signifigance of the usage of words of both French and Anglo-Saxon derivation in one stanza of Chaucer, but according to these people, since I’ve never heard of The 39 Steps, I’m a drooling moron.
Articles like this pander to intellectual wankery. The clueless assistants interviewed might have been recently hired; might have been pursuing degrees other than English in college; might have been assigned to, say, the true crime or the sports section of the bookstore. When I was hired at Waldenbooks, they put me in charge of the literature section because I could compare and contrast 1984 and Animal Farm. One of my co-workers hadn’t read either book, but she could tell you anything you wanted to know about the romance section, including the monthly mini-books that infested the shelves; a feat of which I am still in awe. Another girl did nothing but the children’s books- one guy was the one we always asked for help with computer book questions. There are hundreds of thousands of books in a bookstore- specialization is a necessity.
Furthermore, the fact that they had assistants who could use a computer, speak legible English, and make an approximate guess as to the books being asked about means they went to some trouble to hire those people. In 4 years I had a chance to hand out applications to a ton of people. Some of them misspelled their own names. Booksellers generally get paid minimum wage. McDonald’s pays better. If you have as comprehensive a grasp of literature as the reviewers expected, it seems likely that you have a college degree and can therefore get a better paying job.
Finally, there’s usually not much demand for literature, except around the beginning of the school year. The emphasis is on knowing what the customers want, and if the books you sell every day are Oprah’s picks, you’ll remember those off the cuff better than you’ll remember who wrote Watership Down (Anybody?). In those 4 years, I sold maybe 100 copies of Playboy, and 1 Paradise Lost.
Oh, that just ticks me off. I worked in a bookstore for 4 years, I have a BA in both English and Drama, I’ve written 15-page reports on the signifigance of the usage of words of both French and Anglo-Saxon derivation in one stanza of Chaucer, but according to these people, since I’ve never heard of The 39 Steps, I’m a drooling moron.
Articles like this pander to intellectual wankery. The clueless assistants interviewed might have been recently hired; might have been pursuing degrees other than English in college; might have been assigned to, say, the true crime or the sports section of the bookstore. When I was hired at Waldenbooks, they put me in charge of the literature section because I could compare and contrast 1984 and Animal Farm. One of my co-workers hadn’t read either book, but she could tell you anything you wanted to know about the romance section, including the monthly mini-books that infested the shelves; a feat of which I am still in awe. Another girl did nothing but the children’s books- one guy was the one we always asked for help with computer book questions. There are hundreds of thousands of books in a bookstore- specialization is a necessity.
Furthermore, the fact that they had assistants who could use a computer, speak legible English, and make an approximate guess as to the books being asked about means they went to some trouble to hire those people. In 4 years I had a chance to hand out applications to a ton of people. Some of them misspelled their own names. Booksellers generally get paid minimum wage. McDonald’s pays better. If you have as comprehensive a grasp of literature as the reviewers expected, it seems likely that you have a college degree and can therefore get a better paying job.
Finally, there’s usually not much demand for literature, except around the beginning of the school year. The emphasis is on knowing what the customers want, and if the books you sell every day are Oprah’s picks, you’ll remember those off the cuff better than you’ll remember who wrote Watership Down (Anybody?). In those 4 years, I sold maybe 100 copies of Playboy, and 1 Paradise Lost.